Author: richardwsymonds37

Move over, Freud

Philosopher-therapists are using their abstract discipline to help people lead more meaningful lives

By Ian Coutts

SOCIETY

December 2017

Who am I? What is right? How should I live my life? Everyone asks these questions at some point or another. Joanna Polley helps her clients answer them.But Polley is not a psychotherapist, nor does she use the techniques of any particular school of psychology or follow Carl Jung or Sigmund Freud or other giants of psychoanalysis. Instead, Polley’s tools are the writings and ideas of the great thinkers in the eastern and western traditions, stretching back to the ancient Greeks and ultimately to Socrates, whose directive “Know thyself” might make him history’s first therapist.

A philosophical therapist, Polley is part of a small movement of philosophers who are turning their abstract academic discipline into a method of helping people lead happier, better, more effective lives. They perhaps draw inspiration from Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher, who said, “There is no benefit in philosophy if it does not drive out diseases of the soul.”

Superficially, Polley’s work does resemble conventional therapy. She meets with clients in a Toronto office furnished with a sofa and a couple of comfy chairs. “I don’t see a clientele that’s very different from a regular psychotherapist,” she says. “They’re struggling with depression and always anxiety.” They’re experiencing “a general kind of malaise, and they want to work things through.”

Her approach to these issues is where the difference lies. “I don’t focus on childhood. I don’t work on the traditional things a psychotherapist works on. . . . A lot of people who come here have already worked through that stuff.” Her clients face many of the problems we all have, not necessarily because there is “something wrong,” she says, but “because we are human.”

When she meets with clients, she says, “I like to discuss what’s going on, and then I like to step out and look at it from a more philosophical position. What is the point of a human life or a career or a relationship? What is love? What is work?”

After exploring the big picture, she’ll “zoom back in on how can we apply these [questions] in making really concrete changes in their lives.” It’s an approach she characterizes as both “more abstract and more practical” than conventional therapy.

In her work, Polley draws on a range of philosophers, whom she often advises her clients to read as well. Friedrich Nietzsche, she says, is “very good for helping people to see that a lot of what they think is because our culture thinks it. They have never reflected on it or thought about it.” Aristotle is good, too. “He’s the one who really shows us that ethics is about practising ethical acts and becoming the kind of person who does ethical things.” Twentieth-century philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze (the subjects of Polley’s doctorate) are also useful, as are examples taken from literature, including, perhaps improbably, Henry Miller, whose novels were banned in the United States for obscenity. “He encourages people to take risks and to see that life is an ongoing experiment, not in ‘What am I?’ but in ‘Who might I be?’”

On a more fundamental level, philosophical therapy challenges people’s thinking. “I support my clients, and I offer them compassion, but I also tell them when they need to check their inferences,” Polley says. “I tell them, ‘No, your reasoning is faulty.’ People need to be told they’re thinking incorrectly or not carefully enough. Or in a very limited way.”

Some of Polley’s clients seek her out with specific ethical dilemmas — whether to terminate a pregnancy, for example — and stay with her for as little as three sessions. Others work with her for a year or more. The bulk of her clients are women in their 20s. “When I first started this [six years ago], I thought I would get a lot of people in mid-life crisis . . . people who are a little bit older and starting to reflect on their lives and wondering what it’s all about.”

Michael Collister, whose name has been changed, is a client of Polley’s who is in his mid-60s. A retired lawyer, Collister says he had “completed a fairly successful career, if you define success by how society defines success.” But he worried. “I didn’t want to just have the rest of my life evaporate with no purpose.” Over the course of three months, Collister and Polley met regularly. Readings included Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant and Viktor Frankl.

For Collister, the biggest difference between philosophical therapy and conventional therapy is orientation. “Psychoanalysis is all about you,” he says. “That has its place, but there’s this quote from Bertrand Russell that goes basically, ‘Until I looked outside myself, I wasn’t happy.’” (In his book The Conquest of Happiness, Russell writes that his own happiness came “very largely . . . due to a diminishing preoccupation with myself.”) Thanks to his work with Polley and his own reading, Collister has found a new purpose: researching inequality “and how we, as a society, need to think about how we’re organized to address what I think is going to be a very significant problem in the future.”

Contemporary philosophical therapy has roots in early-1980s Europe, where individuals trained in philosophy began working with clients outside university departments. Today, it has a complicated relationship with its institutional counterpart, with some academic philosophers speaking critically about the therapeutic branch of their discipline.

In an article in The Point, Tom Stern, who teaches philosophy at University College London in England, writes that a therapeutic approach to philosophy, taken too far, “finds it difficult to tell you that you are wrong about something. You are told . . . that you are ‘the expert’ about what matters to you, that there’s ‘no intrinsically good or bad thing to do,’ that what matters is the ‘meaning and purpose’ that you put on it. . . . You can be misled, on the wrong path, disoriented, hindered, distracted. But you can never just be wrong.” Ultimately, Stern asserts that “philosophy questions” and “life questions” — the search for truth and the search for fulfilment — aren’t so easily combined.

Mark Kingwell, a philosophy professor at the University of Toronto, admits most graduate students in his department lack interest in anything but academic jobs. They feel, Kingwell says, that “if you don’t achieve that outcome, somehow you’ve failed.” It is also unlikely, he adds, that philosophical therapy “could be taught in the kind of philosophy department that’s currently the mainstream.”

Interestingly, Peter Raabe at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, B.C., does teach what might be called philosophical therapy. But while his course is offered by the philosophy department, it is specifically intended for future mental health-care workers.

Polley is undaunted in her mission to encourage more philosophers to consider offering counselling. Ultimately, she’d like to see the creation of a Canadian professional organization for philosophical therapists. (At present, she and many of her counterparts are certified by the American Philosophical Practitioners Association.) Then, she thinks, they could co-ordinate with the university departments and say to the students, “Here is an option for you.”

It wouldn’t represent a radical new direction so much as a return to philosophy’s roots, to Epictetus and Seneca, so-called Stoics who saw philosophy not as an abstract pastime but a concrete, hands-on tool to help make sense of life and the world.

“The Stoics were the ones who believed in philosophical practice,” says Polley, “and then it sort of got lost.”

“I am convinced that…they will be plunged into war without their will. I like Germany; I like German cities; and I like the German people. But I believe that the rulers of the German people are deliberately and cynically preparing to hurl them into a wicked and a desperate war of conquest…The Germans cannot prevent that war, because they do not believe it is coming. The British could prevent that war if, before it is too late, they could be really convinced that it is coming. That is why I want to convince them that war is coming, because I want to prevent that horrible war”

SOLAS MAGAZINE
By DAVID ROBERTSON
Welcome to the fifth issue of Solas, the magazine that continues to grow and develop! This month, we have the usual range of articles, from politics and ethics, to arts and culture. The main theme is on bioethics, which for some people, at first glance, might not seem all that important until you realise that it really is a matter of life and death.
Recently, I have been reading a fascinating old book by the atheist philosopher-turned-Christian, C.E.M Joad, The Recovery of Belief (published in 1952). He asserts that the “progressive” atheistic view of humanity results in an arrogance and hubris that will inevitably be self-destructive. “Having raised himself by dint of his own efforts from the level of the animals, he will probably continue to evolve into something greater than himself (Nietzsche, it will be remembered, was still praying of the Superman). Man, in fact, is the highest expression of the spirit of the universe, a spirit which will one day, if it has not done so y et, raise itself in and through his agency to the level of the divine. God, in fact, as Alexander suggested, is waiting to be evolved by man’s efforts. When he arrives, he will be man’s handiwork and man’s descendant.”

It has ever been thus.
It is a short road from the temptation of the devil in the garden – “you shall be as gods” – to the modern arrogance of a humanity which thinks we are the top of the evolutionary tree and can only get better.
Joad became a Christian after observing the inhumanity of humanity in World War Two. The horrors of that war were caused and facilitated by philosophies which believed in the inevitable progress of humanity, the bankruptcy of religion and the emergence of Superman. Another atheist philosopher, John Gray, cites Lewis Namier: “Hitler and the Third Reich were the gruesome and incongruous consummation of an age which, as none other, believed in progress and felt assured it was being achieved.”

After both World Wars, that turn-of-the-century confidence in the inevitable goodness and progression of humanity took a hit. But it appears that as we move on we forget our history and so seem doomed to repeat it. Christians are the ultimate humanists because we recognise that humanity without God becomes inhuman. As humans exchange the glory of the God in whose image we are made, for the lie that we shall be as gods, we end up as dehumanised animals.

Australian celebrates philosopher’s life

An Australian has travelled more than 10,000 miles to celebrate the life and times of philosopher and previous South Downs resident CEM Joad on the 60th anniversary of his death.

The incredible journey was made a reality when Australian Greg Devine read an article published by Ifield resident, Richard Symonds, called ‘The Forgotten Christian Philosopher’ about the celebrated author, Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad.

“Greg has been described as Australia’s keenest CEM Joad researcher and, perhaps somewhat inevitably, came across my name during his research on the internet,” said the 59-year-old.

Mr Devine read that the walk from Amberley Station to South Stoke was probably the most beautiful walk on the South Downs – a walk CEM Joad himself took many times – and so he decided to get in touch with Mr Symonds and experience the route firsthand.

On July 28-30, the Australian from Redcliffe (a bay-side town north of Brisbane) travelled to the UK with his wife and a close friend.

“Richard and I hit it off immediately, chatting all the way,” said the 56-year-old.

“He showed me the historic North Stoke church. We then proceeded to the South Stoke Farm, stopping off at St Leonard’s Church.

“Richard then pointed out the building and window at which CEM Joad sat writing many of his books.”

CEM Joad wrote and edited more than 100 books, pamphlets, articles and essays, including ‘An Old Countryside for New People’ and ‘Folly Farm’, until his death in 1953.

He most notably appeared on The Brains Trust, a BBC Radio wartime discussion programme.

“Joad’s writings speak to me of a man who searched earnestly for the truth. He’s inspired me to use language in lively and engaging ways,” said Mr Devine.

The Australian party also visited ‘Meadow Hills’ in Stedham – the former home of CEM Joad. The owners, Sarah and Martin Large, kindly welcomed the tourists.

Mr Devine said: “The garden had become overgrown but Sarah was valiantly working to restore it. She is convinced that Meadow Hills was the location of the farm and house described in Joad’s book ‘Folly Farm’.”

The 60th anniversary of CEM Joad’s death was marked at the Stedham Village Memorial Hall in April.